The young man who’s celebrating bar mitzvah this week at my shul has an interesting take on Noah. Now, the rabbis who wrote the classic midrashim already recognized the ambiguous nature of the Torah’s …

“I’m going to tell my body to stop growing.” This is somewhat chilling, coming from a boy who did indeed stop growing as a toddler. “You want to stay new, don’t you?” I ask. “So you’ll be farther away …